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(2) Through the limitation of the number of employments open to women, they are driven to underbid each other for work. By "employments open to women are meant those that their prejudices will allow them to enter, not merely those that are fit for their sex to undertake. The position of household servant, for instance, is one that very few American-born white women will now accept. Nor is it of any use to argue the question, or to hold up the example of a few ladies of high culture and slender purse; the position of direct control by an individual will, that is bound by no rules save such as it extemporizes from time to time, is become intolerable to them. They fly from it to the store, the factory, the school-room, and finding all these insufficient, they will sew for slop-shops and die of slow starvation rather than go to the kitchen. German and Irish women, and Chinese men, are the only material to be had to fill these vacancies, to the varied discomfort of the mistresses of the households.

The plan of coöperative housekeeping in cities and towns. offers a solution of the difficulty. By this, cooking would be conducted in a large central establishment, under the management of superior chefs, and the purchases made by experienced caterers under the direction of a committee of housekeepers. This change would be in the same line as that which removed the work of spinning and weaving from the list of household duties; it would cheapen living to both rich and poor, by enabling wholesale purchases; it would give an opportunity for the application of scientific principles to the art of cooking; and it would furnish congenial and well-paid work to a large percentage of the women now out of employment. Nor would it be impossible to apply the same coöperative principle to other parts of household work, and relieve the mistress of the family from the necessity of depending on the services of a class, who -with some exceptions—are certainly not improved and humanized by their position.

CHAPTER EIGHTH.

THE SCIENCE AND ECONOMY OF MONEY.

§ 142. The progress of society from slavery and poverty and isolation to freedom, wealth and association, involves not only a progressive differentiation of its members and of their functions, but also a constantly increasing interchange of services between these. The more developed the society, the greater the inter dependence of its members, and the more numerous and rapid these exchanges. With the solitary backwoodsman they have no existence, and he must overcome nature's resistance and master her utilities unaided. But when the country begins to be settled, these exchanges begin; if a town spring up, they become more numerous and rapid; if the town grow into a city, the system of mutual service becomes complete.

These exchanges are at first effected by barter, or the direct exchange of commodity for commodity. But a little experience shows this process to be both awkward and wasteful. The artisan might waste more time than he spent to produce his commodity, in searching for a customer whose wants and possessions were the exact complement of his own. Where a single article that varied in the value of its parts, such as the carcass of a cow, had to be divided among a great number of customers, the adjustment of values was nearly impossible. This led to the setting apart some one commodity which should be the representative of all estimable values, and should be the instrument of these exchanges and therefore of human association for mutual help. Cattle (pecus), being the first form of personal property (peculium or chattels), was first used as money (pecunia). Afterwards silver, and probably somewhat later gold came into The scarcity of these precious metals, and their eminent fitness for making ornaments, had, doubtless, brought them into general demand and caused them to be held at a very high price. The transition to their use as money was gradual and natural.

use.

It

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is impossible to trace the early history of their adoption. The oldest historical records tell us that they were already in use, though not yet coined, in the patriarchal age,—that is, at a time when the family was still the largest social unit among peoples that afterwards played a part in ancient history. The first coins were in the form of animals, as indicating that they were substitutes for cattle. Afterwards they were coined in small, flat masses of equal weight and a recognised degree of purity, with an image and superscription, which now give these pieces a great historical interest.

Money is therefore the instrument of exchange and of association. It is more usually defined as "the instrument of exchange and the standard of value." In a popular, not a scientific sense, it serves as an instrument for the comparison of values. But as value is the measure of nature's power over man, and as money, like every other commodity, falls in value with the growth of that power, it is more scientific to regard labor as the standard of value, that being the means by which nature's resistance is overcome. It is true that in setting

aside any commodity for use as money regard is had to its comparative fixity of value. This is the consideration which determined the selection first of cattle, and then of the precious metals. But neither these commodities nor any other possess that fixity which entitles them to rank as scientific standards alongside the standards of weight and measure.

This usual definition errs also by defect. Money is the instrument of association as well as of exchange. The absence of it tends to isolate men, to prevent the formation of industrial relations among them, and to keep labor down to an unproductive level. Its abundance enables the organization and drill of the industrial forces, and the direction of their energies to the best purpose.

Association is the largest fact in economic experience. It is the exchange of services not only within the range of contract, but among millions who never see each other. The payment of two cents for a morning newspaper brings its purchaser into association, to that extent, not only with the people actually engaged

in its editing, composition and press-work, but with paper-makers, ink-makers, miners, lumberers, telegraph-agents and so forth.

§ 143. The adoption of any form of money as the instrument of association and exchange was a clear advance upon barter. In barter every commodity discharges two functions at the same time; it is both goods and money. In the new method of exchange the two functions are separated; money and goods become separate things. Nor is a vast amount of material thereby withdrawn from other uses: a very small amount of money suffices to effect a very large number of exchanges, and no country needs anything like as much money as it has property; it might as well have wagons and railroad carriages enough to convey all its movables at once. Very much of its property never changes hands, except by inheritance; a still larger amount not once in a long series of years. At most a very small amount changes hands in the course of a single day, and there is no use for as much money as will represent this amount. The same sum (be it coin, or notes, or credit represented by a check) may be used repeatedly in the same day, and thus discharge many times its own amount of indebtedness. The most perfect money is that which changes hands with greatest rapidity; the more rapid its circulation the greater its useful"The proportion borne by money to commerce decreases in advancing societies" (Carey), and by consequence its rate of interest, or the price paid for the use of money, falls with every advance in its usefulness. Brutus got fifty per cent. a year; Rothschild will lend at four.

ness.

The precious metals have many qualities that fit them for use as coined money. They are not liable to rust; they are easily alloyed with baser metals and as easily separated; they receive a stamped impression easily and retain it firmly; they are not easily worn or abraded; they are readily distinguished from other metals. Their defects are their weight, their intrinsic value as commodities, and hence the real loss of value by such abrasions as they suffer. So long as we use as money what possesses a very considerable value for other purposes, and is liable to be

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diverted to other uses, we cannot be said to have attained the complete separation of the function of money from that of commodities.

That these metals should be used at all as money is a matter of convertion or general agreement merely. But that convention once established, their value in circulation, like all other values, is not conventional, but is determined by the cost of reproduction. If, however, the general agreement to use them as money were to cease, and they were to be demonetized, the excessive supply for other uses would cause their purchasing power to decline very greatly. Their intrinsic utility would, indeed, be more generally made use of, since they would be fai more generally employed in the arts than at present, and in this respect there would be a net gain to mankind in the change. Their use-especially that of gold-as ornaments would cease on this decline in price, and this would make them still cheaper. However well fitted their color and brilliancy to attract the eye and please the fancy of childish savages, the refined taste of civilized man would cast them aside as barbarous. They still hold their place in the toilet because they are " condensed wealth, the trophies of industrial warfare," analogous to the savage's string of scalps. Very few of the articles made of them have any artistic merit.

§ 144. They are difficult of reproduction, and therefore valuable, because they are scanty in supply and hard of access in their natural deposits. Gold especially is found in very small quantities, and to dig for it is—considering the number of persons employed in it-the most unprofitable of human employIt has the fascination of a lottery, in which a few succeed, but thousands fail. The Mexicans have a saying that he who mines for copper will grow rich; he who digs for silver may or may not; he who seeks gold never will. Were it otherwise, success would defeat itself, through the decline in the value of its products.

ments.

These metals are, therefore, a very expensive instrument for effecting exchanges. They require a vast outlay of capital, labor